• Netanyahu Fights To Survive
• US Congressional Elections: An Unpredictable President & A Grim White House

• By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

Israel’s Prime Minister, the consummate political survivor, is scrambling for options to hold on to power.

Hard-fought elections delivered no clear winner (AFP/Agence France Presse, Oct. 29).

With all the votes counted, Netanyahu’s right-wing block finished slightly ahead of the camp of his rival, the ex-military chief Gadi Eisenkot, but still short of an outright majority.

Both groups have said they will seek to form a government.

The outcome might mean weeks of trying to cobble together coalitions.

In the immediate term, a stalemate could benefit Netanyahu, who would remain caretaker prime minister.

Israeli-Arab parties, which have made unprecedented gains, could play a king-making role in ousting the prime minister if the opposition agrees to work with them.

But Netanyahu, who relentlessly attacked Arab parties [of Israeli citizens] throughout his election campaign, is now accusing them of having stolen the election and has demanded an investigation into unproven accusations of foreign funding of the Arab parties [by Qatar].

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, who is tasked with choosing a candidate to form the government, has said that Israel must try to avoid new elections, raising the possibility of a national unity government.

This would also suit Netanyahu quite well.

Netanyahu’s security-first reputation was all but shattered by the militant Hamas’s brutal October 7, 2023 attack.

Eisenkot had channelled public anger over Israel’s failure to effectively prevent and counter the well-planned and surprise attack in the run-up to the polls.

Netanyahu had pulled out all the stops in the campaign trail, touting an endorsement from U.S. President Trump as well as military blows dealt to Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the groups’ backer Iran.

The 77-year-old Netanyahu faces an international arrest warrant over war crimes and genocide in Gaza, a long-running domestic corruption trial and a spiralling multi-front Middle-Eastern conflict that has dragged on for over three years.

Born in Tel Aviv on October 21, 1949, Netanyahu inherited his ideological background from his father Benzion, a former aide to Zeev Jabotinsky, leader of the so-called “Revisionist” strand of Zionism that advocates for a “Greater Israel” (AFP).

Netanyahu opposed, and eventually helped to bury, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the 1990s, which held a two-state solution as its ultimate goal.

He now promotes a vision of an Israel whose borders extend as far as Jordan, voicing support for annexing parts of the occupied West Bank and undertaking measures to promote the growth of Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law (AFP).

As a younger man, Netanyahu served in an Israeli commando unit and fought in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

His early life’s defining tragedy came when his elder brother Yonaton was killed leading the Entebbe hostage-rescue mission in Uganda.

“When the news reached me that Yoni had died, I felt as if my life had ended,” Netanyahu later wrote (AFP).

Raised partly in the United States and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He became one of Israel’s most visible spokesmen abroad, showing an ease on US television that has never left him.

Elected to parliament in 1968, he took over leadership of the right-wing Likud Party in 1993.

In 1996, in the first election after the assassination of peace-negotiating Yitzhak Rabin, Netanyahu pulled off an upset victory by the tiniest of margins and at age 46 became the youngest prime minister in Israeli history (AFP).

He served as head of government:

• From 1996 to 1999,
• Then again from 2009 to 2021,
• Before returning to power in late 2022 by cobbling together a coalition that includes once-shunned extremists.

For years, Netanyahu maintained that the foundations of Israel’s security rested on military strength, but he also gained a reputation for caution (AFP).

Adamantly opposed to a Palestinian State, Netanyahu saw Hamas rule in Gaza – bankrolled by Qatar – as a way to divide Palestinians and weaken the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. Which enjoys strong European support.

The dastardly Hamas attack exposed the failure of this strategy. It also made evident the government’s and the security forces’ acute intelligence failures on multiple fronts.

But Netanyahu refuses to take any responsibility at all, and also blocks an independent enquiry.

As the Gaza war widened, Netanyahu began to frame the conflict as a generational struggle intended to reshape the region and uproot the influence of Iran’s clerical state.

In recent months, he has even gone to the extent to claim bombastically [leaning on his mentor Trump] that he has “changed the face of the Middle East” (AFP).

His supporters credit him with responding to Israel’s darkest hour with unprecedented military resolve, and confronting Iran directly – something none of his predecessors had ever done.

Critics, both domestic and international, however, say his actions have mired the country in intractable conflicts and made it a pariah on the world stage.

The looming possibility of a return to war with Iran has lent more urgency to talk of a national unity government with Eisenkot, who has previously declared that Netanyahu “is unfit to remain in office” (AFP).

But as the saying goes: ‘there are no permanent enemies in politics’ [or international affairs].

US Congressional Elections

The Republican Party could lose both chambers of Congress in Tuesday’s mid-term elections.

Many Republican candidates in tight races have tried to distance themselves from Trump’s policies, his behaviour and the widespread allegations of self-dealing in his administration.

A grim mood has set in around the White House Katie Rogers: The New York Times, Oct. 30).

Advisers close to the White House, expect Trump to make changes to his administration, depending on how next Tuesday’s elections go. He may also release his powerful chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and depending on how the conflict with Iran develops, even his Secretary of Defence/War.

Trump also plans to attack Iran after the mid-terms and this may lead to mayhem at home and abroad.

The writer can be reached at: shashimalla125@gmail.com